Therefore, when the theologians who write about Him say that He ate, drank, and was born, understand that the body, as a body, was born and was nourished with food appropriate to it. But God the Word Himself, united with the body, continued to order all things and, through the works He performed in the body, made Himself known not as a mere human being but as God the Word. These things are said of Him because the body that ate, was born, and suffered belonged to no one else but the Lord. And since He had become human, it was fitting for these things to be said of Him as a human being, so that He might be shown to possess a body in truth and not merely in appearance.
Just as these ordinary bodily experiences made His presence in a body known, so the works He performed through the body made Him known as the Son of God. Therefore He cried out to the unbelieving Jews: "If I do not perform the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I perform them, even if you do not believe Me, believe My works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father."
Invisible in Himself, He is known from the works of creation; so also, when His divinity is veiled in human nature, His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power and Word of God.
To speak authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is not human but divine; and who could see-Him curing all the diseases to which humanity is prone, and still deem Him mere man and not also God? He cleansed lepers, He made the lame to walk, He opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was no sickness or weakness that He did not drive away. Even the most casual observer can see that these were acts of God. The healing of the man born blind, for instance, who but the Father and Maker of man, the Controller of his whole being, could thus have restored the faculty denied at birth? He Who did thus must surely be Himself the Lord of birth. This is proved also at the outset of His becoming Man.
He formed His own body from the virgin; and that is no small proof of His divinity, since He Who made that was the Maker of all else. And would not anyone infer from the fact of that body being begotten of a virgin only, without human father, that He Who appeared in it was also the Maker and Lord of all beside?
Again, consider the miracle at Cana. Would not anyone who saw the substance of water transmuted into wine understand that He Who did it was the Lord and Maker of the water that He changed? It was for the same reason that He walked on the sea as on dry land—to prove to the onlookers that He had mastery over all. And the feeding of the multitude, when He made little into much, so that from five loaves five thousand mouths were filled—did not that prove Him none other than the very Lord Whose Mind is over all?